Avalanche Acquire Carl Soderberg

Legal Free Agent Tampering Day gets off to a bang as the Colorado Avalanche trade their 6th rounder to the Boston Bruins in exchange for the rights to impending UFA Carl Soderberg.

Soderberg scored 44 points for the Bruins last season, 13G 30A, as he played all 82 games for them, averaging just under 14 minutes a night at even strength (29 points 5v5). He was a neutral possession player for his team (-0.5% CF Rel, 2.6% OZ starts Rel). If we look at his impacts, his defense was fairly negligible (-6.85 dCA Impact, negative is good) but didn't add too much in the way of offense (-56.39 dCF Impact, positive is good). (All these numbers from War on Ice because obviously.)

So this is a forward whose numbers indicate defense, and given the news today about Ryan O'Reilly likely heading out the door, that would seem to be a logical move for the team to make. Trading for his rights isn't something I would expect a team that doesn't have a handshake deal in place with him to do, so stay tuned for the signing.

Per Pierre LeBrun (sourced here at THW due to ESPN's paywall), Soderberg's initial ask is in the $5 million range, which seems..... UM TOO HIGH. We'll see where his number finally shakes out. His last deal was only for about a million per.

According to the Avalanche website, this 6th rounder was dealt from Boston originally as part of the Max Talbot deal. That trade tree now looks like this: